Why Teach?

So I was asked to write an article for my school district's teacher newsletter. This is what I came up with. For those of you who are teachers or nursers or counselors or pastors or anyone whose life involves pouring into kids that aren't your own, this one goes out to you.



Why Teach?
By David Tieche

A couple of weeks ago, I went out into my backyard and assembled this very complex, semi-large play structure for my son, Justus, who just turned one. My son can’t even walk yet, let alone swing or go down slides, but I’m thinking ahead. I’m not particularly handy, and using power tools usually denigrates pretty quickly into me getting so angry, I end up cursing random pieces of wood or the inventor of the crescent wrench.

But at the end of this day-long project, I found myself feeling particularly good about myself. After all, earlier in the morning, there was nothing in the backyard. Now, there was something. That kind of immediacy – visual, tangible proof of results – makes you feel pretty good about yourself.

I started thinking about this, and I came to realize that the problem with teaching is that most of the time, you don’t immediately see the results of your labor. At the end of the day, you don’t see your kids’ neural synapses literally expanded. You don’t observe the spatial reasoning sectors of their mind light up more often. You don’t see their logic centers analyze more acutely. In fact, most of the time, you see blank looks as they rush out of your class faster than a rodeo bull when the gate opens.

Let’s be honest – more often than not our students don’t seem to be absorbent sponges yearning for the knowledge – no, the life-force!— that we offer. Most of the time, I feel like the wares I bring for sale might as well be moldy tamales.

It’s discouraging. Your kids don’t do the reading, the neglect your homework, they talk in class, and seem far more interested in the opposite sex, lunch-time and their cell phones than anything you might have to say. Kids these days. *sigh*

But then I thought back to when I was in high school. I used to skip Calculus class and go sleep in the big chair in the janitor’s closet. I hardly ever read the required novels for English class, and came to school wholly unprepared every day. And I would pretend to take notes in history, but really I’d be writing a note expressing my love to Tiffany. Or was it Amanda? Whatever.

I was a teacher’s worst nightmare, in many ways. But let me tell you, I remember things.

I remember when my government teacher had us do a mock trial, and we got to see how the legal system played out and I realized how important it was that people are innocent until proven guilty. I remember when our psychology teacher talked to us about memory, and how the brain forgets things, and how sometimes, that’s a really good thing, especially for her, because she had three miscarriages. I remember when Jose Schzymanski died when he went into a diabetic coma in his sleep and my 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Woods came in crying and she gave us some poems about loss and just let us write and talk. She told us that sometimes, pretending that everything is okay means we’re faking it. And if we were really going to make it through life, we needed to talk about what was really going on inside us.

But most of all, I remember my 9th grade English teacher, who changed my life. Our assignment was to rewrite a traditional fairy tale, and I wrote this story about a clockmaker who had some help from some magical elves. It was called “So Many Clocks, So Little Time.” And Mrs. Gardetto called me up to her desk and said six words that changed me forever. She said, “You have a way with words.” Okay, that’s six words. There’s a reason I teach English, not Math.

Here’s my point. The seeds we plant might not be visible now. And it might take years for those suckers to pop through the soil. And it might not happen for every kid. But we have the power of life and death in our words, and in our classrooms. We have a bunch of kids captive for an hour of their lives every day, which – sadly- in some cases, is more time than they have with their real mom or dad. A lot can happen in an hour.

My mom –who was a kindergarten teacher for 32 years – told me something once that I don’t know is true or not, but it should be. She told me that in the 50s, in the USSR, some of the highest paid professionals were professors and teachers because the Russian government knew that the future of the country rested in the hands of teachers. She said that is why she taught.

I think, in part, it’s why all of us have chosen to do this. So thanks. Thanks for being a teacher. Thanks for being a history maker. Thanks for putting in the hours and caring and working and dealing with teenagers. And I guarantee, you might not be around to hear it, but some day, your students will thank you, too.